Holloway and Tsegay fires up World Indoor Tour Final

Date: 30 Jun 2017 By Alp Ulagay

In one of the final events of winter athletics season, there were a few world leads and also a few good marks at the World Indoor Tour final in Birmingham. There was a particular expectation for good marks in the track events as UK Athletics recently layered a new track to the beautiful Utilita Arena. Home crowd was expecting vergy good marks from the likes of Dina-Asher Smith, Daryll Neita but also from middle-distance stars Laura Muir and Keely Hodgkinson. Asher-Smith stepped up even before the final and bettered her own British record winning in 7,01. Even though she easily won the final she wasn’t able to improve the newly broken record. (7,06).

Another spring star, american hurdler Grant Holloway was again irresistible in 60 meter hurdles. He flied over hurdles once more, winning by a large margin (7,35 to 7,47). He also lowered his own world’s best by three hundreths of a second. That was also his 62nd win in a row in indoor sprit hurdles which has surely a place among all-time greats.

Meanwhile, the highlight performance of the whole event belonged to Gudaf Tsegay. Last year’s outdoor world champion aimed for the 3000 meters world record in Birmingham. Thanks to a very good pacemaking, she managed to stay pretty close to the world mark during whole race. Even though she seemed losing pace in the last few laps, she composed herself and almost caught the green light indicating the current world mark of 8.16,60 of Genzeba Dibaba. We knew that she might missed by only a hair's breadth which was the case indeed. 8.16,69 was the second best ever mark in the distance.

British crowd’s other favorites easily won their own races. However they weren’t even close to break the records in their events. Laura Muir was never on pace to break Maria Mutola’s 24 year’s old mark. Muir was about a second behind the record pace midrace. Then she slowed down and finished at 2.34,53. On the other hand, Keely Hodgkinson crashed her rivals in 800 meters and also lowered her own British record in a time of 1.57,18. However she was almost one second and half of world record pace.

During the earthquake I was in Sierra Nevada with my wife. But that really was a hard time because all the family of my wife is from Antakya. All the people over there lost their houses. Her brother, her sister they don't have any houses, but they they are fine. They are now in Istanbul. Hopefully the government is big enough, they're going to act with their maybe money. So we will see. My wife Emine is right now in Madrid and we are travelling both Tuesday. She also qualified Euros. Then we will travel with Spanish team and hopefully we can do both something beautiful to share with all Antakya people.

Next week, we might be the only wife and husband to compete in Euro Indoor in Istanbul. We both race in the same event. We are really happy. And we were working for it. She was in a good shape, but well, she had a very tough week because his family lost everything. She lost friends and cousins. In Antakya the situation is really, really hard. We married over there six months ago. There were 245 guests and six of them are already dead. But we'll try to make something beautiful in Istanbul and we hope to share with people in Antakya.

My preparation is going good. This was my third 1500 metres of the indoor seaon. So I started 3.38, then 3.36, then 3.34 and today Spanish record in 3.33. I'm really happy. Right nowI I keep working for Istanbul to try ro make the things harder for Jacob Ingebritsen as hard as we can. Because he will be racing 1500 metres before. Hopefully he will get tired for 3000 meters and why not try to beat him there?

WORLD INDOOR TOUR WINNERS

WOMEN’S EVENTS

• 60 meters: Aleia Hobbs (USA) 20 pts
• 800 meters: Keely Hodgkinson (Great Britain) 30 pts
• 3000 meters: Lemlem Hailu (Ethiopia) 22 pts
• Pole vault: Alysha Newman (Canada) 25 pts

MEN’S EVENTS

• 400 meters: Jereem Richards (Trinidad and Tobago) 27 pts
• 1500 meters: Neil Gourley (Great Britain) 27 pts
• 60 meters hurdles: Grant Holloway (USA) 30 pts
• Long jump: Thobias Montler (Sweden) 22 pts
• High jump: Hamish Kerr (New Zealand) 20 pts